LabWatch

Focus on biolabs and technology in Seattle. For more info check out labwatch.org and nobioterrorlab.com.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

UW Losing Accountability

I was saddened to discover this week that I'd completely missed thismonths UW Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) meeting. I saythis months but since the meetings really only happen a few timesper year, if you miss one you find yourself waiting a long time untilthe next one (the next scheduled meeting is in September). I thoughtI'd find consolation in the fact that I could obtain an audio copy ofthe meeting but discovered that as of the May meeting, the UWwill no longer make audio recordings.

That's bad news for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is publicoversight. The UW IBC meetings have been recorded for years,"something they were doing when I took over" according toSusan Alexander of EH&S. EH&S had them recorded so theycould later use the audio to make more accurate meeting minutes.So why the change? Susan says it was because the AG(Attorney General) found out they'd been recording the meetingsand said they had to stop because the UW didn't have permissionfrom the individuals involved.

Really? So what's the big deal with asking permission of theparticipants? It's not like one doesn't know (as in a phoneconversation) if one is being recorded since there are four largemicrophones sitting on the table when one arrives at the meeting.How hard would it be to verbally ask participants at the beginningof the meeting when, say, they are being asked "did everyonereceive a copy of the last meeting minutes?" or "is there is anythinganyone would like to add to the agenda" to ask "is there is anyonewho objects to audio recording the meeting"?

And since when are meetings that are held at public institutions,attended by public employees, doing the publics business (andin this case overseeing public safety) off limits to electronicrecordings? I understand the concept of if there are portions ofmeetings where for reasons of security or proprietary informationthat the public be excluded but that's not the case here.

And it's not just that the UW isn't going to record the meetings,the public won't be allowed to record them either. That's importantto note. I'd gotten permission to videotape the January IBC meetingand was prepared to do so but didn't exercise my right when I sawthat a sufficient audio recording was being made of that meeting.I later obtained a copy through the UWs Office of Open Recordsand Public Meetings and it is this act that I believe began the ballrolling towards where we are now. I did the crazy thing of taking arecording of an open meeting and putting both the audio and atranscript of the same up on the internet for the public to access.It's something I think all public institutions should do automatically(without being asked) but very few do. From that transcript I latersent out a press release pointing out some disturbing incidents thathad been brought up at the January IBC meeting. As a concernedcitizen I felt it was important to report to the public what the UWwas doing (since clearly no one else was) with regard to biosafetyissues and their potential impacts on public health and our economy.

To that end, I hope that people will support keeping the UW IBCmeetings open to all and allowing both EH&S and the public torecord them.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Interview with Dr. Debra Durham, Primatologist with PETAGiven Friday April 28, 2006 at a protest at the WaNPRC,UW Western Avenue Primate Facility in Belltown

Mike McCormick: Tell me your name and what brings you out here today?

Debra Durham: My name is Dr. Debra Durham and I’m a Primatologistwith PETA and I’m here to let people know about the abuse of animalsat the University of Washington.

MM: And why have you singled out this particular facility?

DD: We’ve singled out this facility here on Western Avenue because it’sa facility that tests very dangerous pathogens in monkeys and the abuseshere are particularly egregious. One of the most disturbing incidents welearned of at this facility involved exsanguination practices that werecompletely unauthorized. They were a violation of guidelines establishedby the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare and in these proceduresmultiple monkeys were subjected to them. They were essentially bloodletted until they were on the verge of death. The animals were gasping forair, in cardiac distress and going into shock. And the researchers wouldsimply take as much blood as they could before the animal died. Theywould keep them alive and do it again the next week. And these wereentirely unauthorized procedures. And we’re horrified that the Universityof Washington would let activities like this go unpunished. The individualwho was actually in charge of these experiments is a member of theUniversity's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, the committeethat’s supposed to have oversight of animal experiments at the Universityof Washington. And we’re horrified that a man would do this is givenauthority and oversight over animal activities.

MM: Now did you find that this was an anomaly or is this the norm forthis facility and/or the University itself?

DD: Unauthorized procedures are amazingly frequent at the Universityof Washington. We have dozens of instances that involve unauthorizedsurgeries, use of unauthorized drugs, use of unauthorized studies and it’sactually shocking how frequent this is. And these violations range fromusing animals without permission to killing them without permission.And sometimes they can’t even get that right. There were severalinstances where animals were supposedly euthanized and put in adead animal freezer and people later found them to be alive. Andthis is really, really appalling.

MM: And how does the University and this facility compare to otheruniversities and facilities?

DD: I find the violations here at the University of Washington particularlyegregious. There are facilities that have more USDA violations than theUniversity of Washington but those aren’t facilities with as much moneyas the UW. The UW receives the second most money in public healthservice funds of any U.S. institution, second only to Harvard. So to havethese violations at an institution that receives so much government supportI think makes it especially troubling.

MM: So what, based on your knowledge, what would have been theproper response to, for instance, the experiment you first talked about,where they bloodlet the animals to such a degree?

DD: Well clearly that individual should not have permission to work withanimals. They were given permission to take 10 ml per kilogram of weighteach week and that’s an extraordinary amount of blood. So for example,a person can donate a pint of blood every two months and if a person wasput on this regimen they would have six liters of blood taken out in thatsame period. It would prove very, very lethal for people to be involvedin this procedure. And to think that someone could violate even that leveland then continue to have permission to use animals and actually haveauthority to give other people permission to use animals is shocking. Ithink the individuals involved should have been suspended and have theirauthority to use animals permanently revoked because they are killinganimals. {editors note - the violation was for the bloodletting, not thekilling}.They represent an extreme threat to their very lives. At the veryleast they should have disclosed the fact that these violations are takingplace and the University definitely doesn’t. All of these things happenunder wraps and they’re just hoping people don’t notice and that theycontinue to do more and more deadly experiments here in our backyard.

MM: What oversight mechanisms are currently in place and what oversightmechanisms would you like to see in place?

DD: The current oversight mechanism is the Institutional Animal Care andUse Committee, which is a committee that’s mandated by the AnimalWelfare Act, which is enforced by the United States Department ofAgriculture, in terms of giving permission for animal experiments at theUniversity of Washington. This committee obviously doesn’t do muchgiven the dozens of violations that take place at the UW, and their verysevere nature. I honestly don’t think there’s any oversight that could begood enough to manage animal experiments because I don’t believeanimals are ours to exploit in experimentation. But while that is legal andwhile we continue to work to change that, the minimum protections shouldinvolve oversight by groups that include animal protectionists. People likeme, people from organizations like PETA and NARN for example herelocally, who would actually be advocates for the animals and have authorityto say no, this experiment is too painful, no this experiment is useless, nothis experiment is duplicating prior work, because right now the AWAdoes not have authority to do that. They do not deny permission to doany experiment no matter how painful, no matter how deadly it might beand that’s something that has to change.

MM: So when a particular scientist is found to have, you know,committed a violation, does that then go on a record, their recordof some sort?

DD: Violations are almost always responded to with what’s calleda letter-of-counsel, which is simply a letter from the IACUC to theinvestigator that describes the offense and tells them not to do it again.And that letter does become part of their University of Washingtonrecord, in terms of their permissions to do animal experiments. Soonce someone has committed a violation, the next time they ask forpermission to do experiments, the Committee could see the fact thatthey had a violation before, however this is not part of their personnelrecord, and there’s no federal database such that as if someone commitsa violation here at the University of Washington and leaves and goes tojoin the faculty at Harvard, their history of animal abuse and violationsdoes not follow them. And they can continue to commit abuse at otherinstitutions. And that’s sometimes the case that a problem employee willgo from place to place until they’re sort of shot out by disciplinary action.And it just sort of creates a perpetual problem in terms of animal abuse.And this is with investigators, with veterinary staff and with technicianlevel staff that are used in animal care operations.

MM: So it sounds like we really need a national database to keep trackof all this?

DD: A registry of offenses by individual investigators and by institutionso that its easy to find out when violations have taken place and activistgroups don’t have to spend months making Freedom of Information Actrequests to find out what kind of abuses are taking place. Universityshould be forthright about what’s happening and forthright the disciplinaryactions that are taken.

MM: How can people find out more about these issues?

DD: People can find out more about these issues by visiting Stop AnimalTests Dot Com. And there’s lots of information about the abuse of animalsin laboratories and alternative methods that do not involve animals. Sothere are scientists that are using progressive methods that are non animalbased.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

UW Plagued by Biosafety Problems

UW Plagued by Biosafety Problems

Seattle, WA 05/02/06 - Less than a year after the Universityof Washington withdrew a request for federal funding for ahigh security biodefense lab, recently released transcripts revealsystemic safety problems at several UW biosafety labs.

At the January 2006 meeting of the UW Institutional BiosafetyCommittee, members discussed multiple safety lapses thatincluded both procedural and equipment failures.

At least six and possibly more than a dozen scientists ("PIs" or"Principal Investigators") working at a biosafety lab in South LakeUnion disregarded SOPs (standard operating procedures) onassigned work with biohazardous agents.

The PIs "initiated their studies without getting final approval andwithout having the appropriate biosafety cabinets, the appropriaterooms, the appropriate education, the appropriate paperwork onfile and without the appropriate waste stream," according to DavidEmery, Chair of the UW IBC (Institutional Biosafety Committee)."For the life of me, I can’t figure out exactly what happened here".(From a transcript of the January 13, 2006 meeting of the UW IBC).It appears neither of the two oversight groups, Environmental Health& Safety (EH&S), nor the IBC, upon discovering the violations,sought to halt the biohazardous work.

In addition, IBC meeting transcripts indicate that a backup airhandling system--a primary laboratory safety component--failedduring a 2005 test at one of the BSL-3 labs located in the UW’sHealth Sciences Building. The incident triggered an immediateshutdown of the affected labs, and all associated researchersreceived medical surveillance. Due to the failure, the UW plansto begin regularly testing its 30 other BSL-3 labs locatedon-campus, in the U-District and in South Lake Union.

Biosafety laboratory concerns are nothing new to Seattle.

*Lab safety was the primary concern raised at public hearingswhen the UW proposed building a high-security biodefenseBSL-3 complex on-campus last year. Since then, the NortheastDistrict Council (NEDC), an organization representing 20neighborhoods has proposed public oversight of biosafety labsin Seattle.

*In 2004 three researchers at the IDRI/Corixa BSL-3 labs onFirst Hill in Seattle were exposed to TB from a faulty animalaerosol chamber.

*The UW plans to aerosolize the recreated 1918 influenza viruson monkeys at BSL-3 labs located in the densely populatedneighborhood of Belltown next year. The 1918 influenza strainkilled an estimated 40 to 100 million people. It currently has noknown cure.